Research & Reports
An Update on Variable Annuity Contract and GLWB Filings in 2013
We have been sifting through recent filings of variable annuity contracts and lifetime withdrawal benefits and, while we haven’t been seeing quite as much activity in the pipeline as in past years, we did catch...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from April-May, 2013
In this commentary we’ll get caught up with variable insurance fund filings from the months of April and May, a time period that was fairly active, however we didn’t see a large number of new...
Lincoln National Communicates Confidence in Its Annuity Business
Investors and analysts are very curious as to how variable annuity operations may affect the health and profitability of insurers, especially since companies are now pulling away from selling rich guarantees. As we noted in...
VA Insurers Say They Are Managing Benefit Risks – But Still Want to Trim Them
It’s been a while since we checked in on variable annuity guaranteed benefit risk levels, and we were reminded of that fact by MetLife’s recent investor day, where the topic was discussed at length. We...
VA Insurers Continue to Revise Existing Benefits to Trim Risks – and Sales
Over the past year or so we have seen an increasing number of insurers file variable annuity guaranteed benefits that are not entirely new, but rather slightly de-risked versions of existing ones. Last week we...
VA Sales Appear to Have Continued Their Downward Movement in 1Q13
We have just completed our review of variable annuity results for publicly-traded insurers we watch regularly and, based on the performance of those companies, we suspect the industry saw a drop in deposits in the...
Some Notes on VA Contracts and Riders – That Are Coming and Going
We are still working our way through the May variable annuity prospectus updates, and recently we have found an interesting mixture of activity on the part of issuers, ranging from the scaling back or closing...
A Variety of Tweaks to Contracts, Riders are Coming Through in May Updates
Over the past few weeks we have been occupied with sifting through annual variable annuity prospectus updates, and within some filings we saw adjustments to in-force contracts and benefits that we think provide evidence that...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from March, 2013
This March we didn’t see a great deal of variable insurance fund filings with the SEC. Most of the activity revolved around manager changes and the trimming down of fund platforms through mergers and liquidations…
